Trust, Hopes, and the Dashing of Both
by MBScavenger1498
Summary: In Stohess, at the intersection of three intertwined stories, Annie makes the painful error of not pulling a sleeping beauty. Character development ensues, or at least the beginnings of it. One-shot: T for language and non-descriptive mutilation/torture. Hints of Ereannie, Eremika, and Aruannie within canon limits. Now has a continuation!


**Just to preface, my description of the fight here is a sort of amalgam of what I consider the best parts of the manga and anime versions. I know it's a bit weird, and that it might piss off manga purists, but let's face it: the flaming berserker rage was cool as hell. **

Eren had looked on in swiftly increasing panic as the scene unfolded. Annie had refused to come down the stairs. Annie who he'd trusted. He and Armin had pleaded. She had moved to bite her finger and suddenly everything went off of the thin edge into the pit of Hell.

He'd taken one solitary, dumbstruck step as Scouts tackled her, felt a protectiveness he hadn't known he possessed for her. But then she flicked her finger, and something snapped.

He hadn't resisted, fought, screamed, or done anything as Mikasa pulled him and Armin down the stairs like so much training gear. He moved hollowly, the image of an enormous female nightmare rising in the midst of a blood-soaked sunset glued behind his eyelids. He should have been feeling the usual anger, a surge of adrenaline that would divide the world neatly between him and his enemies. He _should_ have been enraged.

But against all logic he wasn't. All he could feel was the crushing emptiness of loss. Something was gone. He tried to focus; he had an enemy to fight, but first he had to protect his family. As he bit his hand, trying to shift, he searched for his motivation. _'Capture the traitor. Attack the Female Titan. Protect Armin and Mikasa from… Annie? No, no, not… Just…'_ Somehow his mind wasn't accepting his goals. He couldn't reconcile his target with its face. The emptiness persisted. What the hell was this hollow feeling? What had he lost? And why did it hurt so damn much to bite his hand?

Mikasa and Armin ran off to buy him time and a surge of self-loathing built upon the black hole that had swallowed his anger before it could form. It had been growing ever since they'd started this operation, a hollow, illogical disbelief. Annie couldn't be an enemy. She was a bit of a hard-ass and sort of selfish, but she was a good person at heart, he was sure of it. So how could she have done all of this? She couldn't possibly justify it!

And then he knew what was gone. He'd been truly betrayed. By a comrade, and worse, a friend. He knew what she had taken. It had budged from its spot when Hannes pulled him away with his mother, very nearly been lost when he saw his squad-mates die like ants. His already battered trust was just a hollow space now. Finally, his mind caught up with reality and his rage knew where to go. It wasn't some faceless, traitorous titan he had to attack; it was Annie.

He had to stop her. No matter what it took.

**0(O)0**

The first time she'd gone after Eren, Annie had been cautiously hopeful, and a bit exhilarated. It was well buried, but she did feel some small guilt for the latter. She was far too focused to acknowledge it, but it was there.

She knew that Eren would be mad at first. In fact, she knew for a fact he would be livid. But if she could just get him away from the Legion, if she could just explain it all to him, _maybe_ he would understand. Once he knew, he might even forgive them… eventually. Nothing but the setting would change; she would be home, and one way or another, everyone she cared about would be safe.

But as she'd fought through soldier after soldier, and her own exasperation at Reiner being a prick, her hope had begun to slip. She made it look easy, and at first it was almost hilariously so, but plowing through the Scouting Legion was time-consuming, and she could only keep a shift going for so long. The trap hadn't exactly helped. She was still wondering where in the blood-soaked hell they had gotten so many harpoon launchers.

Killing the elite squad was honestly the most difficult part of the whole mission, but that wasn't really saying much. Their skill caught her off guard, and in the end, they were the ones who truly screwed her. Eren getting off a shift was just annoying, but she could have handled him decently well at full strength.

But she was not at her best: she was armless and half-blind. He probably could have won if he'd fought smart, but he was too angry to do it, let alone recognize her before she finally got fed up and ended it, disappointed in all honesty. She hadn't quite realized it at the time, but she was already screwed. Between killing the elite squad and having to fight Eren handicapped, she'd lost more than enough time for Captain Levi to hand her one of the most decisive defeats of her short life.

This time was different. There was no seemingly endless army of cannon fodder to slog through, and no terrifyingly fast midget to combat, but even at full strength, she knew she couldn't win. Between Eren actually thinking, and the full force of the Scouting Legion restricting her movements, she was unequivocally screwed. She'd failed her comrades, failed Eren, and failed her father.

She wasn't about to give up lightly, but she was quickly learning that a battle of attrition with Eren was a losing one. He didn't seem to understand the simple concept of giving up. This time, he wasn't just angry; he was focused. And as he kept getting up from wound after crippling wound, she knew he wasn't going to stop until she did; that there would be no victory here.

In the face of an inexorable, flaming monster, she finally gave into the instincts that screamed for her to run. Her fingers hardened and she slammed them into the wall, disregarding the loss of her leg as Eren tried to stop her. She might be able to make it, if she could just reach the top.

Then blood squirted, blades glinted in the sun, and phantom pain replaced her fingers. Her eyes leaked tears as she felt gravity pulling her through the air. Mikasa's eyes had a habit of communicating the emotions the rest of her face didn't, but for once her feelings were plain to see; calm, smug, almost carefree _triumph_. Whatever strange competition she had created in her mind, Mikasa had finally and unequivocally won. She savored the hard-won victory like a sweet wine.

Against her vehement wishes, Annie obeyed Mikasa's calm words and fell, all the way down to the hard, sun-warmed ground. The pain of impact was dull and immaterial through her titan body, her despair already starting to degrade her connection to its nerves. An angry rumbling growl accompanied Eren as he half limped, half bounded over, his foot still not quite regenerated. Even as she tried to move, stand, run, _anything_, he pinned her enormous shell to the ground, heavy breath and skin burning against her giant form. His teeth pierced the nape of its neck and Annie felt a cool breeze brush against her tear-streaked face. She should have been resisting, hiding, trying to run, but for a crucial moment, she didn't. As he reached down and pulled her out, the world abruptly shrunk down to its normal scale and she opened her eyes.

The first things she saw were Eren's irises; his gaze was angry liquid green fire, far brighter, and no less focused than his human eyes. The rest of his face was a patchwork of rapidly evaporating blood and burning wounds, healing far faster than should have been possible on that scale. He glared down at her, and she felt his grip trembling, just barely loose enough that she wasn't crushed into a bloody smear on his palm. The accusation and betrayal in the gaze was palpable and she wondered why he hadn't just killed her already.

Eren's jaws parted and an unearthly, raging roar left them, sending her hair whipping back. Her eyes shot wide and finally, her terror broke, her mind coming full circle. Eren's lipless mouth wasn't suited for words, but it got across the anguished, enraged, accusatory question just fine: **'Why?'**

**0(O)0**

It was strange, Hanji considered, having an enemy who could change their face. In the cumulative hour or so that she'd interacted with Annie Leonhardt, the blonde had mostly been a Titan: a giant, inhuman and undeniably evil juggernaut tearing through her comrades like so many irritating cobwebs. Her skinless, intimidating form had been easy to detach and think clinically of, an adversary worthy of nothing but anger, calculation, and many, many explosively propelled wires.

This girl whom Hanji now confronted was a different beast altogether, though a beast nonetheless. She was small, almost fragile-looking despite how dangerous she was. Tear streaks had been plain on her skin when the legionnaires brought her in, even with the scars of titan integration still marring her face. Her eyes had been blank like glassy blue marbles.

Beyond the similarities in facial structure and hair color, it was hard to reconcile the girl with the monster. That was making cutting through her shoulder with a wood-saw a much more guilty exercise than the Scouting Legion's resident mad scientist had anticipated.

Like a dam finally giving way, a long-suppressed scream of agony escaped Annie's mouth and Hanji stopped, wrenching the jagged instrument out of her with a loud crunching **squish** that she usually would have found satisfying. She bent down and looked directly at the girl's thoroughly battered face, expression in its usual cheerful and slightly unhinged smile, despite her misgivings.

"If you tell me who sent you, I can stop for the day." Annie's eyes held nothing but seething hatred as she met the older woman's gaze. The blonde didn't make any quips or insult her. She just stared back; for a moment, the hiss of steam rising from her numerous wounds became the only sound in the room.

Hanji sighed exasperatedly and picked up a crowbar from her small table. She was getting nowhere and learning nothing, which always left her annoyed. Upside: that anger made the torture easier.

**0(O)0**

Since the day he'd first sparred with her, Eren had always thought of Annie as a strong person. Whether in terms of mentality, or martial arts, he'd seen in her a person head and shoulders above himself and most others he'd met, someone he would never have to hold back with. Her stoicism had made her a challenge, and he'd come to respect her for the small bits of true personality that had occasionally shone through her cold, disinterested facade.

Or maybe it was because she'd beaten the shit out of him constantly. In the end, it was neither here nor there, because this person before him was just about as far from impressive as a human could get.

Eren's former teacher and friend was splayed out on the floor of a stone cell, with her wrists and ankles chained by thick manacles. She'd been stripped of her boots, military jacket, and harness and looked generally as though she'd been put through a meat grinder. Evidently, Hanji had not been keen on a humane interrogation.

"Annie." No response. Eren turned to his friends. Mikasa just shrugged and then returned her glare to the grimy wall. She'd been acting strangely ever since he'd decided to go down to the cell. Armin was regarding Annie with a carefully professional expression, the sort he adopted when he was analyzing something and couldn't find a solution. If her sorry state made him feel anything, he kept it to himself.

"Annie!" Eren's shout finally got her to raise her head. For a second, their eyes met. Her apathetic stare was lacking its usual sharp edge. Eren's fists clenched; he couldn't stand those eyes. The deep blue irises held nothing but sarcastic defeat; angry, but without any drive. Something in him snapped. "God fucking dammit!"

Even he didn't really see his punch coming. It connected squarely with her face, re-breaking her recently healed nose. On his knees in front of her, he used his other hand to pin her down by the neck and drew back for another punch. Some part of his brain heard Armin gasp and take a step forward, but Mikasa held him back with a strong grip, the blank apathy not budging from her face.

Eren was too pissed off to especially care. He was angry that she'd killed Levi's squad. He was angry that she'd tried to kidnap him. He was absolutely _livid_ that she'd been a traitor in the first place. Beating her in Stohess had taken the edge off of his compounded rage, but now, with her in front of him, it exploded outward.

**KRACK!** "You've fucking given up, haven't you?"

**KRACK!** "You think you can just surrender like that after everything you've done, after all the _people_ you killed, that you betrayed?! You think you have the right?!" His next blow slammed into her ribs.

"You're stronger than this! Anyone who could do what you've done must be stronger than fucking _this_!"

Eren was breathing heavily, more from his emotions than the actual beating. Annie turned her head and spat out a bloody tooth before leveling the same emotionless glare on Eren. His enraged advance had put them almost nose-to-nose. The skin around one of her eyes was already starting to swell and even more blood was trailing from her mouth. His angry expression slipped into a dead frown as he stumbled back into a standing lean against the opposite wall.

It was Armin who finally spoke up, voice shaking as he broke the empty silence. "Annie… You have to talk to us. They'll kill you if you don't." For a moment it seemed as though Annie might react, her mouth opening slightly and her eyes focusing on Armin, but the expression passed just as fast as it had come. Her voice was gravely and hoarse from too much screaming, as she turned her head to Armin and Mikasa.

"They'll kill me no matter what I do. My last act won't be to betray my home." Then she smirked, which was quite creepy with her bruised and bloodied countenance. "Honestly, I don't even know why _she's_ here. I never took you for one to taunt your prey once it was dead, Ackerman."

Mikasa's eyes narrowed and her lips pursed, but she didn't make any move to retaliate. Eren looked back and forth between the two girls, eyes narrowed. What had he been missing between them? It was something, clearly.

Finally, his eyes came back to Annie, whose gaze was downcast. Her lips were quirked in a sad shadow of a smile, eyes hooded and shadowed by her blood-caked bangs. "I almost had you. You might have lived if the short bastard hadn't turned up." She looked back up and Eren stared into the eyes of something different; something terrified, angry, and hopeless. "They'll play nice for now… You're useful, but so are horses and that doesn't stop people from putting them down when they aren't."

Eren glared back at her and Mikasa's grip on Armin's arm tightened to painful strength, but despite the anger and doubt those words had dug up, very little happened.

Armin was smart enough to have come to that conclusion a while ago. He wasn't the idea guy for nothing; he'd long since planned for such an eventuality. Considering the moves already made against Eren by the Military Police, someone in power would be after them soon, with or against the Scouting Legion.

For all his dense single-mindedness, Eren wasn't an idiot, and he certainly wasn't blindly trusting. This latest betrayal had assuredly washed him clean of that last bit of mental baby fat. One of his best friends had turned out to be a mass-murdering enemy combatant; it wasn't a fact he'd be forgetting any time soon.

Mikasa had never liked Annie in the first place and took exception to the idea that she couldn't protect Eren, even if she'd failed to do so once already. Even if she wasn't there, there were hundreds of others that would need to be outsmarted or outgunned to take him away. It wasn't about to happen.

"I've seen enough. We're going." Without another word, Mikasa dragged Armin out of the cell and Eren moved to follow. As he neared the door, he cast a look back at Annie: his enemy, teacher, and distant, sarcastic, betraying asshole of a friend. She looked back at him, and for a moment, he thought he might have seen the ghost of a hopeful smile on her face. But then it was gone, like a lightning strike, and her eyes were the same dead apathetic orbs they'd always been, her lips a thin, not-quite-frowning line of soft pink skin. The door slammed behind him and he didn't look back.

**So, hope you liked it! Leave a review, tell me what you thought. If you did like it, the continuation: Expansive Horizons, is on my profile.**

**Thanks for reading,**

**Scavenger**


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